THE NEW SOCIALISM.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 933, 17 January 1890, Page 28

THE NEW SOCIALISM.

There is nothing in the way of social ethics too indigestible for radical votaries

of the age. Extremes have been pretty nearly reached in the multitude of propositions put forward for the amelioration of humanity’s sorrows, and the regeneration of society. Individuality is to be sunk in the collective community ; the ego of a man or woman is to be a very little thing compared with the ego of the State. And in the State everything is to be vested and a general fair play serving out all round is to take place periodically. The Spencerian doctrine of absolute ethics, as interpreted by Mr Laidler, has excited a lot of controversy in the Old Country lately, and Professor Huxley has taken part in the contention by giving ids yiews in an able letter addressed to the London Tildes. He shows that on the assumption put forth States have no more right to the land witlfip them than individuals, the whole surface of the earth belonging to the whole human race, no one having any right to any portion till there has been a general parcelling out, in which all are supposed to acquiesce. And without a cosmopolitan plebiscite, no State could claim any right to its land at all. _ And, continues the Professor, “yet if one of the primitive communities had been told by any missionary of ‘ absolute ethics ’ that the rest of mankiud had any right to interfere with the land of that community, he, in all probability, would have been short-lived, ” History shows that iq

bringing about the change from collective to individual property, industrialism has done as much as militarism. It is not force more than labour which has promoted the individual ownership of land. There is much in Professor HuxleyS argument, only it is very ex-parte, _ and does not alkny enough for the spirit of reform that is riding On tile ifihgs df stimulated, philanthropy. Serious sbci.rfi discrepancies do exist, and dre discreditable to civi'isation. All sorts of propositions are being advanced to bring about reform, and out of it all the proper and legitimate nostrum will of a verity be evolved. But it has to be prescribed yet.